Windows 7 trounces Windows XP at green computing

A white paper shows how much better Windows 7 is at power management than …

Mindteck, a company that offers embedded software development and consultancy services, has released power consumption data after testing sleep, idle, low-use, and high-use scenarios of various Windows PCs. The researchers also built a model to estimate cost savings (pictured above) by using a centralized power management policy. What really piqued our interest, though, was that Mindteck looked at the effect of processor chipset drivers on the power consumption (in watts) of Windows XP and Windows 7 with varying driver configurations and older hardware:

Power consumption (Watts)

OS

Windows XP

Windows 7

Percent improvement

PC Configuration

Idle

Low

High

Idle

Low

High

Idle

Low

High

P4 Updated Drivers

64.2

69.7

89.8

57.3

66.1

79.4

10.75

5.16

11.58

P4 Out-of-box

64.2

68.7

106.2

57.3

66.1

79.4

10.75

3.78

25.24

High-end Updated Drivers

47.2

48.0

67.7

45.2

49.1

66.8

4.14

2.29

1.33

High-end Out-of-box

50.5

54.3

78.0

45.2

49.1

66.8

10.50

9.54

14.36

As you can see, the results favor Windows 7 in every single scenario. The out-of-box differences are particularly high. For Windows 7, the consumption levels are actually the same as with the updated drivers—this means that Windows 7 is taking care of the chipset drivers, even on older hardware. The same cannot be said for Windows XP, and even with updated drivers (obtained manually), it still performs worse than Windows 7.

The whitepaper actually focuses on explaining how to "maximize the impact of effective power management with Windows 7," but the comparison to Windows XP was included in the appendix. Mindteck Smart Energy analysts quantified power consumption on five basic hardware platforms: a high-end desktop such as those used in engineering design or media processing, both a business desktop and business laptop, a Pentium 4 class business desktop to investigate prior-generation hardware, and a netbook. If you've already rolled out Windows 7 in your company, or are planning to, the 11-page report should help your CIOs and IT managers alike learn about leveraging Windows 7 to implement a comprehensive power management strategy. Check it out at the link below.